Ok, maybe it’s not THAT bad. I hooked up my Pi Zero to a Wi-Pi controller by taking the WIPI out of it’s shell and hardwiring power to the end power connector – and signals to the second usb connector as here.
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/28/first-raspberry-pi-zero-hack-piggy-back-wifi/
I then grabbed Berryboot (original, not the Pi2 version) and altered the files as here. http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot/headless_installation
I made sure that the files were in Linux format (I used Notepad++ which can save in the right format). Popped in the MicroSD…. plugged in USB power to the end connector and… nothing – not even a flashing light.
That’s it. Not a clue what I did wrong and guess what – I only managed to get ONE Pi Zero!
So here’s an update. With the Berryboot code for the original Pi, nothing happens. With the Berryboot code for the Pi2, the little green light comes on – so it is reading the SD… but nothing else happens. As yet I’m not seeing anyone else having managed to get the Pi Zero working with Berryboot.
Google led me here, my v1.3 Pi Zero was dead after a couple of months in my desk drawer. No idea what had happened. I tried new SD card, etc, nothing happened. I measured a low 2.85 V on the GPIO 5V pins and 1.9 V on the 3.3V. In an effort to find 1.8V somewhere and possibly power via the GPIO, I measured the voltage between PP8 and PP6, 3.295V…
And behold, the Pi Zero booted.
I have no idea what happened, but it now works again. Just wanted to share this.
Damn!
A few things I discovered with my Zero..
It doesn’t like the model of Kingston 8GB micro SD I had to hand, but it boots OK to a Sandisk one taken from my PI2 and a Sandisk clone of it. I DO get a regular flashing LED with the Kingston though.
Sometimes HDMI doesn’t fire up – I see the ‘drive’ access LED flashing away so I know it’s booting, but no output. I’ll have to try another USB power adaptor for this.
My zero appeared dead after I soldered on some header pins. I gave the board a thorough check using an SMD inspection eyepiece and could not see any defective soldering or bridges. I defluxed the solder work with IPA, let it dry, re-inspected and still could not see any problems. Then the board started to work again. I either had a very small solder bridge or the board is really twitchy about stray capacitance (the flux..unlikely?), or…???
Best of luck resurrecting yours
Footnote – from a post in the Raspberry Pi forums:
“It seems the Zero does not have a power LED, only an activity LED, which only turns on when it can actually read from the SD-Card. ”
That implies a Zero with no LEDs might just be having trouble with the SD card rather than being totally dead.
— How’s it going, by the way?